U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he will nominate economist E. J. Anthony as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), just ten days after he dismissed its previous head, accusing her without evidence of manipulating labor market data, Reuters reported. The decision came after the agency published weaker-than-expected employment figures and made a record revision to the statistics for May and June, reducing the number of new jobs by nearly 260,000.

Anthony, chief economist at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, must be confirmed by the Senate. “Our economy is thriving and E. J. will ensure that the published numbers are FAIR and ACCURATE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Bureau, with a staff of about 2,300 as of September 2024, is under increased pressure due to the declining quality of its statistics. Its monthly reports on the labor market and inflation are followed by economists, investors, business leaders and governments around the world, often moving stock, bond and currency markets immediately.

The dismissed Erica McEntarfer, appointed by Joe Biden, denied the allegations and said the agency works to provide objective data. Trump, however, vowed to replace her “with a far more competent and qualified” leader.

Anthony, who holds a doctorate in economics, has been an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and has taught courses in labor economics, money and banking. He will have to deal with declining survey response rates and problems collecting key statistical data, including on inflation.

The nonfarm payrolls report, a core product of the BLS, provides a monthly picture of the U.S. labor market, including the number of jobs created, unemployment, labor force dynamics and average hourly earnings. The data are revised twice after initial publication and undergo an annual large-scale revision.

The BLS also calculates the key inflation indexes CPI and PPI, which are used to determine social payments and by the Federal Reserve when making monetary policy decisions. Earlier this year, however, the agency warned that staff shortages had led to a reduced scope of CPI samples and office closures in Buffalo, Lincoln and Provo. The share of prices introduced via calculated estimates rather than through actual data collection has risen to 35%. As of this month the BLS is also ending the calculation of about 350 PPI components.

The agency has also been affected by the hiring moratorium imposed by Trump after his return to the White House in January and is likely to face a wave of departures at the end of the summer.

According to a Reuters survey of 100 economists and experts, most expressed concerns about a deterioration in the quality of official economic statistics. Former commissioner Erica Groshen, who led the BLS from 2013 to 2017, said that cuts could lead to delayed releases, undetected errors and biases in reports. Former commissioner Keith Hall, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008, added that the agency’s budget has been virtually frozen for a decade while data collection costs continue to rise. |BGNES